Admission and Unit Information - Postgraduate Diploma in Information Communications Technology

Computer networking is probably among the fastest growing technologies of our times. The Internet interconnects millions of computers providing many new exciting opportunities and challenges. The Internet and the World Wide Web have provided the communication and infrastructure needed for global collaboration and information exchange. As a result of the rapid growth of networked systems and the diverse applications that run on them, success in many professions depends on a sound understanding of the technologies underlying these systems and applications. This unit explores these issues further and provides the students with such an understanding. It covers the principles and current practices pertinent to computer networking and communications. It describes some of the important technologies and devices used in modern networks for information distribution and data sharing. The unit helps the students to understand important relevant models, protocols and standards in networking and internetworking.

The Internet and the World Wide Web have now become part of our everyday life. Initially, in the early 1990's Web technologies consisted of only the markup language HTML and the transmission protocol HTTP. Now they include a variety of client-side and server-side technologies with fresh developments on a continual basis. This unit introduces students to Web technologies and, along with Network Technology, is a core unit for the Master's course in Information and Communications Technologies. The unit focuses on Web page and site design, markup languages, standards, protocols, client-side technologies such as CSS and scripting languages, server-side technologies like Web servers, programming languages and databases, authoring tools, and legal, ethical and social issues. It also includes the use of multi-media, the principles of intranets and extranets, security, and access rights. This unit is heavily orientated towards practical experience based on amplifying the theoretical concepts. The unit will cover the role of the W3 Consortium and possible future trends.

This unit focuses on the advanced features of networked systems and the emerging network technologies and services. The unit provides students with an in-depth understanding of relevant protocols, the emerging standards, and standards organisations. The emphasis of the unit is on development of the student skills to enable them to do proficient research and development works and studies in the computer networking discipline.

The performance of any modern organization is heavily dependent on their networked systems and how these systems are managed. The increasing demand for ICT services and the huge growth of the Internet have resulted in large heterogeneous networks. This unit addresses the issues relevant to management of such networks and the services that run on them. It covers the principles and current practices pertinent to integrated management of networks, systems, and services. The unit helps the students to understand relevant protocols, standards, and standards organizations. It also introduces them to trends and key research areas in management of networked systems.

This unit covers advanced concepts and technologies used in emerging multimedia communication systems. Theory, practice and standards for IT professionals endeavouring to build data compression systems for multimedia applications are emphasised.

This unit is designed to provide students with an opportunity to learn and apply the knowledge, values and skills of consultancy, project management, and research by undertaking an approved computer-related project, preferably on behalf of a client. The unit covers preparing and presenting project proposals in web-engineering and design and e-business areas, project management, time management, communication skills, and the evolving legal, ethical, and social responsibilities of IT professionals. Students may work in teams or individually, under the supervision of a staff member, to plan and investigate their project. In this unit students prepare and begin projects that they implement the following session in 300261IT Project Implementation. Both units are compulsory for MIT candidates.

Wireless technologies are amongst the most exciting and rapidly growing areas in computing and information technology. They implement applications that profoundly impact our personal way of communication, as well as how business in a variety of industries and organisations are conducted. This unit goes into details of such issues. It discusses wireless networking technologies and their related applications. The main features of wireless and mobile communication systems and the networked services that are based on these systems are also presented. The unit provides students with an in-depth understanding of relevant protocols, the emerging standards and standard organisations. The students are also introduced to some of the relevant current key research issues of the field.

Web Services is a fast growing area of web-based application development. It goes further than, and is built upon, web site and enterprise-wide applications, which have been the main focus of web development so far. Web services go beyond the boundaries of a single organisation and make it possible to seamlessly bind several applications from one or more organisations to give a consolidated or unified service to users. The challenges to application development thus come from multiple sources and are more complex than until now. There are new technologies, protocols and standards to master and issues like security, trust and performance to address that again transcend the normal organisational limits. In a layered approach to understand web development, if layer one is web site, then layer two is web-based application within an enterprise and web services form layer three, straddling one or more applications, not all of them necessarily web-based and one or more organisations. This unit will cover the technologies, standards and protocols essential for web services and the issues that must be addressed for their success.

Today organizations extensively rely on web based information systems to market, sell, manage customer relations, and for most of the internal operations. Users are increasingly using mobile devices to interact with this information. Due to rapidly changing business environment these systems need to be designed in away to accommodate the frequent changes. New technologies and frameworks have been developed to support development of large, complex, mobile based, maintainable and evolutionary web systems. In this unit students will study some of these technologies, design methods and frameworks that can be successfully used to engineer such web systems. They will get hands on experience by developing such a system.

This unit covers the both theoretical and practical concepts in the rapidly growing area of Workflow Management System (WfMS). In the current global economy, organisations are investing significantly into WfMS to gain a competitive advantage. With such investments comes the need for an ICT workforce that can use, manage, and create WfMS. Therefore, the objective of this unit is to provide skills and knowledge in: process modelling techniques, system architecture of WfMS, service oriented paradigm in WfMS, workflow analysis, workflow performance analysis, making workflow systems adaptive, process intelligence, and evaluation of ROI of workflow automation efforts.

The information and communications technologies are advancing at an ever-increasing rate. The whole world is now interconnected. The World Wide Web community is actively engaged in developing the next generation of the Web, called Web 2.0. Social networking on the Internet is facilitated by the latest developments such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. Large scale storage technologies are leading to Cloud Computing where data and applications may reside anywhere in the world. Research in how to access meaningful data from the vast amounts on the Web have led to initiatives such as Semantic Web and Linked Data. Mashups mix data from disparate sources to enable users to work more efficiently. Event Web and Second Life promise to change the way we interact. Wireless and mobile computing are changing the market place. All of these trends are still in their early stages. To make sense of all these developments, the top echelon of the World Wide Web Consortium are actively engaged in creating a new discipline called Web Science. Advanced Topics in ICT will enable the students to appreciate the scale of new developments and create prototypes of applications in their desired ambit.

This unit is concerned with the protection of information in computing systems and when transferred over networks. It addresses techniques for securing networking applications and their security arrangements. Students gain an understanding of the fundamentals of the provision of security in networks and systems, as well as an appreciation of some of the problems that arise in devising practical security solutions.

Content management systems (CMS) is a collective name for a wide range of web applications used by organisations/institutions/enterprises and social communities in establishing a continuing web presence. They may connect to backend systems and can provide complete web application services. This unit builds on both the conceptual and practical skills/knowledge to develop and utilise CMS's; in their management; in technical, legal, ethical and security issues; and in utilising web analytics to obtain business intelligence of their operation and impact.

This unit introduces the intelligent agent technology and its applications to e-business. Students will learn the basic theories and algorithms that are used in intelligent agent design and electronic market development. A specific electronic market simulation system will be introduced. Students will have the chance to use this system to build up and practise their skills in developing automated trading agents and e-markets.

Software Testing and Automation will cover topics in two sections - Fundamentals of Software Testing and Test Automation. Section 1 will enable students to get a good understanding of different types of testing, the entire life cycle of Testing; how to design and prepare Test Cases, Test Data, execute these Test Cases and manage the defects. Students will also learn the importance of exclusive Test Environment for Testing and how to create a Traceability Matrix relating Requirements to Test Cases. Since approaches to testing software have also evolved with rigorous systematic approaches and advanced tools to automate some of the testing tasks. Section 2 will expose students to Test Automation using an automation tool, Object mapping and repository creation, Exception handling, logging and reporting, and Creation and Execution of Automation scripts.

This unit entails a substantial investigation and practical work on a topic in an area of current research interest in computing and information technology that is relevant to candidates' professional and intellectual development. Candidates are encouraged to select topics they envisage to be of value to their future careers. Candidates undertake individual project-based study under guidance of a project supervisor.